leaving new york.

I’m leaving New York.

I’m still figuring out how to tell this story, a way to pinpoint the cocktail of grief and relief on my tongue as I say it, but the facts always come out the same: After seven years, at the end of August, I’m packing up and I’m leaving New York City.

New York was the sunset of my twenties and the rise of my thirties. I’ve danced here, loved here, grieved here, belly-laughed. I’ve run thousands of miles, learned to find rest amidst the cacophony, exhaled with a feeling of home as the Manhattan skyline appeared through airplane windows. Broken heart, twisted ankle, shimmering sequin, dancefloor kiss.

Every time I go to write, the stories run into each other like watercolors. I’m making sense of the poem before the ink knows to bleed into parchment. I’m going, the time is right, I go to move, I’m dragging my feet. 

I could stay forever, but I’m leaving New York. 

–

I’ve started taking inventory of the stories I need to take with me. My proverbial desk is crowded with lore. 

I scribble notes about the night, at Fire Island, when I woke up to pee and found a famous drag queen, out of drag, wandering our living room. I made her a snack, diced up strawberries and powdered sugar, and we talked about life in those liminal minutes. I want to remember her face lighting up, almost mischievous, as the first strawberry washed over her.

By a bullet, I mark the night I almost got punched by a bouncer at The Ritz. Over his shoulder, he had hoisted a woman from the dancefloor, and when I tilted my head at this sight, she mouthed ‘help me.’ Answering the call, a friend and I intervened, only to learn she had been found using drugs on the dancefloor, was absolutely refusing to go, and then we had barreled in. We lost ourselves in laughter on the sidewalk afterwards.

I write about my first date in the city, a French guy named Peter who kissed me after I read him a poem at  the Chelsea Pier, and the way we serendipitously got tickets to a Taylor Swift concert that night. How, on my first Friday in the city, Taylor Swift performed a surprise acoustic rendition of Welcome to New York.

The night, if you can believe it, a man fell from the roof of the birthday party. Pandemic summer, and a cherished few gathered quietly on a rooftop in the eerie quiet of midtown Manhattan. A man in our party left to use the restroom, stepped off of the rooftop believing he would find solid ground. A strange sound, the startling discovery peering over, the breath of relief that, somehow, he was alive. 

The time I ruined my Uber score eating Popeye’s in the backseat, even after repeat requests to stop. The blonde woman, a stranger, sharing the ride with me and laughing until tears came as I repeatedly promised I wasn’t eating and crunched the next bite.

I could keep going. I could go on and on and on. The stories I’ve gathered here, the beautiful faces populating them, the wild blur of color and feeling, I can’t bear to let a single page go. 

I’ll leave my couch, sagging in relief, on the sidewalk as I go. I’ll drop books off into neighborhood libraries, donate clothing in bags, leave so much behind without thinking, but the stories? Those I will hoard and hold close. 

My cup runneth over.

–

How do you know when it’s time to leave the party?

Over beer and popcorn, I confessed to a beloved New York friend that the reason I fell in love with him was the way, each night we found joy together, he believed so unflinchingly that the night could keep going. All those nights ended, sure, but he always pressed me to stay longer, dance harder, and push the next page away.

A few years ago, I started to feel my New York story closing. There was no true catalyst event, no unbearable grief or unsolvable quandary. The color within me changed, I discovered, and I started to feel at odds with the rhythms of the life I carved out here.

On trips, I’ve found myself exhaling. Oh my God, I realized many times, I am so at ease here. I started to fantasize about an apartment, somewhere gentler. About sidewalks that hadn’t claimed so much of my skin. When I’ve returned, I’ve grasped at the city’s bricks with a strange sense of knowing. It’s been time to go, and I’ve signed the lease for another year.

There’s nothing more human, after all, than to yearn for forever. I recall consoling my niece when we ran out of bread for the ducks, realizing she hadn’t yet learned to tolerate the brutality of time and its constant conclusions.

Over the past months, I’ve weighed the question: How do you know when it’s time to leave the party? Go too soon, and you might miss the night’s magic moment; stay too late, and the story could sour. 

My lease was up at the end of May. By April, I wandered the neighborhood in tears, watching the train barrel by and feeling wholly unready to leave behind its rattling. I called my landlord and asked if I might stay the summer.

I’m leaving New York. I’ve gathered stories, kissed goodbye to the party, and the ending, it turns out, is being convinced to stay for another song.